Background

Limited access to West African biodiversity data is a crucial barrier to progress on a wide variety of challenges in biological research, decision making, policy setting, and many other facets of natural resources-related activities. An estimated 10,000,000 primary biodiversity records for plants from West African countries exist in herbaria worldwide, yet only a small portion of those records is accessible via existing data portals. Biodiversity research, management, and conservation are therefore operating based on a only small subset of existing information.

The goal of this project is to daylight a rich, high-quality data set describing the distribution of species of plants across West Africa to the scientific and decision-making communities. Data from five West African herbaria and six major herbaria in Europe and North America will be digitized and published by owner institutions. Through this work, caretakers of specimens at institutions on three continents will be linked with scientists from the West African region with intense interest in the data to achieve cost-effective solutions to data needs. This project will generate a valuable regional scientific resource, and provide an exportable model of data digitization for other regions and taxa for which the bulk of existing biodiversity data remain inaccessible and unavailable to science. Most importantly, this project is a novel prototype of a solution to the challenge of data access in which African scientists lead the capture of information relevant to their regions.

Key Objectives and Activities

The West African Plan Biodiversity Data project will develop and mobilize substantial data and human resources in the region focused on documenting and understanding the diversity of West African flowering plants.

Objective 1: Develop collaborative partnerships with 11 herbaria (five in West Africa and six in Europe and North America). Through signed agreements, the project will cement data-mobilization relationships and responsibilities with partner institutions on three continents. Throughout the project, the group will prioritize individualized workflows for each herbarium’s digitization plan, including capacity, collections, and risk assessments, timelines and goals.

Objective 2: Mobilize large-scale primary biodiversity data resources. More than 700,000 West African specimens from all 11 herbaria will be fully digitized, and an estimated 70% will be enhanced with georeferencing and data cleaning according to international data standards. Data will be published by owner institutions, with particular focus on threatened, endemic, and invasive plants, or those otherwise of conservation concern.

Objective 3: Provide advanced training in biodiversity informatics to 10 West African graduate students (two per country) and 50 undergraduate students (10 per country). Students participating in digitization at partner institutions will develop skills and interest in biodiversity informatics, and will carry these forward into careers as scientists and decision makers.

Objective 4: Produce demonstration products and analyses from project data resources. Through a series of five workshops, one in each West African country, the group will introduce the broader scientific community to the data resources mobilized by this project, and provide training on biodiversity informatics. To motivate use of the data, the team will produce worked examples of distributional analyses of West African plants, and knowledge gap analyses for these workshops, resulting in anticipated publications, and publicizing the project model for data-mobilization.

Planned Outputs

Development of effective partnerships and individualized digitization and publication workflows in collaboration with each of the 11 partner herbaria

Digitization of 700,000 West African records of flowering plants, at least 70% of which will be georeferenced and cleaned

Training in biodiversity informatics for 60 West African students (10 graduate, 50 undergraduate)

Publication of digitized plant records by partner herbaria and GBIF

Production of analyses and resources of scientific and decision-making value with West African plant data, such as endemism, species maps and checklists, threat assessments, etc.

Publication of findings in open access journals to assure broad availability of results among interested scientists

Host five workshops for broader scientific community to provide training in biodiversity informatics while also publicizing data resource and exportable model of data mobilization

Planned Outcomes

The project will explore and demonstrate the promise of a new paradigm in specimen digitization: developing-world scientists lead digitization efforts in close collaboration with institutions holding specimens from biodiversity- rich, information-poor regions. The flexibility of this model, tailoring workflows to the capacity and needs of each individual partner institution, is transferrable to other regions, and can be used with other taxa. The data on West African plants themselves will be a valuable resource for informing policy and resource management and can be factored into in land-use planning, and protected area decisions.

Advanced training in biodiversity informatics for West African graduate students will substantially increase the number of scientists active and invested in this field for the region. As they complete their degrees, students will transition into professional fields like research (data producers) and resource management (data consumers), equipped with a familiarity and facility with, and a demand for, high-quality biodiversity data. Thus, training in informatics is an investment in improving the use of biodiversity data in decision making, not only now, but increasingly in the future.

Results to Date

Partnerships have been well-established with the Forest Research Institute of Nigeria, Ghana Herbarium, University of Lomé, TroPEG, Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, New York Botanical Garden, Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Kew Gardens

Across the partners from Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, and Benin, they have digitized 193,000 records and 56,000 images

Five people have been trained in advanced biodiversity informatics techniques, and one Master of Science candidate is nearly complete

Two workshops have been held to offer training on biodiversity informatics

Results to Date

The project is forging ahead in partnership development, formalizing partnerships in MOUs with all West African project partners and several of the American and European herbaria, including the New York Botanic Gardens (USA), the Naturalis Biodiversity Center (Netherlands), and the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle (France).

Each West African partner institution has received one complete set of imaging and data capture equipment.

Eight graduate students were trained in digitization in Cameroon in late 2015. Following this training workshop, the students returned to their home institutions and trained and supervised undergraduates in data capture and digitization.

A physical project meeting was hosted at the Ghana Herbarium in Accra, Ghana.

Project leaders met with several of the European herbaria and received more than 5,300 images from Kew and Naturalis with which to pilot workflows in various databasing software (e.g. BRAHMS).

In total, over 32,000 images and 27,000 associated data records have been captured.

Lessons Learned

Forging cross-continental collaborations has posed logistical challenges for the researchers throughout the duration of the project. Plans for extended training of graduate students at the New York Botanic Gardens and Missouri Botanic Gardens were unable to be realized due complications in acquiring visas. Additionally, difficulties arose relating to visa acquisition for project graduate students and technicians to travel to the Cameroon to receive training in digitization. Although the issue was eventually resolved, the period of training had to be extended as some of the interns arrived late.

Furthermore, forming and maintaining meaningful, productive partnerships with overseas institutions continues to challenge researchers. Although multiple European and American institutions have played a critical role in project success, project activities have yet to begin in several of the partner institutions. Researchers continue to explore ways of engagement with these partners.

Related Publications

Project Director Biography

Alex Asase is Associate Professor and Keeper of the Ghana Herbarium, Department of Botany, University of Ghana. He is First Vice Chair of the Nodes Steering Group of GBIF, and African Representative to Biodiversity Information Standards/TDWG. He has strong interests in biodiversity informatics and management of biodiversity data resources to inform conservation and policy. He has won international grants from JRS Biodiversity Foundation, Rufford Small Grants for Nature Conservation, UNESCO Man and Biosphere Programme, and International Foundation of Science. His previous JRS project resulted in mass digitization of 124,914 herbarium specimens from Ghana and across West Africa.

Notes From JRS

This grant is an important step for JRS in its approach to work in Africa as we seek to increasingly invest in local partners and national scale datasets. Dr. Asase is a prior JRS grantee and has participated in a number of advanced biodiversity informatics training courses funded by JRS as have his partners in this endeavor. The partnership itself was catalyzed at a JRS training course and that was the site of initial planning efforts. In Colombia and Peru, we are learning how herbariums can collaborate on workflows and training to elevate national capacity in biodiversity informatics and we hope to see the same diffusion of knowledge and technology among the partners in this grant. With the existing grant on DNA bar-coding at the University of Ghana, our recent grant to the University of Abomey-Calavi in Benin and training events planned in West Africa, we are able to learn from an emergent network of African researchers and their global collaborators. This project also reflects JRS’ effort to learn from our own portfolio. A study of our grants commissioned by JRS earlier this year, revealed that many risks to large scale digitization and data portal projects could be mitigated by better workflow planning, partnership formation and technical assessments before full-scale work. In response, we extended the project timeline of this grant to include an up front period of partnership formation, planning, and evaluation to support the partners’ success.